Algiers

Algiers (1938)

You've Got A Date With Danger, A Rendezvous With Romance In The Glamorous, Mysterious Algiers... Make A Date Now!

Pepe Le Moko is a notorious thief, who escaped from France. Since his escape, Moko has become a resident and leader of the immense Casbah of Algiers. French officials arrive insisting on Pepe's capture are met with unfazed local detectives, led by Inspector Slimane, who are biding their time. Meanwhile, Pepe meets the beautiful Gaby, which arouses the jealousy of Ines.

Date of release
1938-01-16
TMDB
6.4 / 10 (48)
Runtime
1h 36m
Genres
Drama, Romance, Crime
Director
John Cromwell

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Box office: $951.8K
  • Budget: $691.8K
  • Earned 1.4× its budget
  • Based on: Pépé le Moko
  • Awards: 0 · Nominations: 4

Algiers is a 1938 American crime drama film directed by John Cromwell, written by John Howard Lawson and starring Charles Boyer, Sigrid Gurie and Hedy Lamarr. The plot concerns a French jewel thief hiding in Algiers who meets a beautiful French tourist. The Walter Wanger production was a remake of the successful 1937 French film Pépé le Moko, which derived its plot from the Henri La Barthe novel of the same name.

Production

Walter Wanger, the film's producer, purchased the rights to the French film Pépé le Moko, starring Jean Gabin, in order to remake it, and bought all prints of the film to prevent it from competing with his film in the U.S. Wanger used most of the music from the French film in the remake as well as background sequences.

The first version of the script was rejected by Joseph Breen, the head of Production Code Administration (PCA), because the leading ladies were portrayed as "kept women," and because of references to prostitution and the promiscuity of the lead character. The PCA objected to Pepe's suicide and demanded a script change; in the film, Pepe is shot dead by the police, who think that he is trying to escape.

Backgrounds and exteriors were shot in Algiers and integrated into the film by cinematographer James Wong Howe.

United Artists had considered Ingrid Bergman, Dolores del Río and Sylvia Sidney for the female lead. Sidney, who was under contract to Wanger, turned down the role. According to Charles Boyer, he met Hedy Lamarr at a party and introduced her to Wanger as a possibility. She was already known for her appearance in the 1933 Czech film Ecstasy, in which she had appeared nude.

Boyer did not enjoy his work on Algiers. He later said: "An actor never likes to copy another's style, and here I was copying Jean Gabin, one of the best." Boyer also said that Cromwell "would run a scene from the original and insist we do it exactly that way—terrible, a perfectly terrible way to work." However, Cromwell said that Boyer "never appreciated how different his own Pepe was from Gabin's.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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